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Nov. 23, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

17:31

1515 True News: Global Warming Hack, Illegal Downloading and Unemployment

The moral facts behind the news.

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	I hope you're doing very well. This is two little items of news from the wonderful world of statism.
	The first is that the University of East Anglia servers have been hacked and ten years worth of emails and documents have been released to the public domain, let's say.
	And the essence of this controversy is the degree to which the perception is That data may have been manipulated to support the case for global warming, that theories may have been rejected that questioned it, that people may have been attacked, who opposed it, and so on.
	And so people are obsessing about a guy who says, I used this word, I used this trick to hide the decline in certain data trends to do with tree rings and so on.
	And aha, that's the smoking gun that proves that global warming is crock and so on.
	And I find this stuff all very fascinating.
	And of course, I used to get really...
	Well, if you see some of my earlier videos, I used to get really angry about this stuff.
	I don't now. I just find it kind of silly.
	But the reality is that obsessing over particular words and emails, the context in which they were made, whether one guy says, well, for God's sake, let's not let anyone know that there's a Freedom of Information Act and they can get their hands on the source data.
	That would be terrible and all that kind of stuff.
	There's no smoking gun when it comes to the state, right?
	Because the state is a smoking gun to begin with.
	It's so important to remember, there's this line.
	There's this line in the world, this line in the sand, and it's a fiery line, and it's a bloody line.
	And the line is, there are people on one side of the gun, and there are people on the other side of the gun.
	The hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent, sorry, hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on global warming research and funding throughout the years, throughout the world, is all on the side of The gun, right?
	All on the side of the gun. It is a stick-up, it is a hold-up, it is a pilfering of your wallet at the point of a gun.
	And so the people who are on that side of the gun, the people who are on the receiving end of state largesse, can make up any kind of bullshit they want to justify whatever it is that they do.
	I mean, the climate change stuff has been complete nonsense, in my opinion, for years.
	I simply believe that it's false because it's funded through violence, because stuff that is not funded through violence is stuff that actually has value.
	I have no way of judging the value of the content of climate change science, but I do know that it's funded at the point of a gun, and therefore I know that it does not have any innate value.
	It simply does not have any innate value.
	Things which have innate value are not funded at the point of a gun, are not forcibly funded by extracting money from people with the threat of jail times.
	Saying that climate change has value is like saying that a rape victim loves the rapist.
	If there's love, you don't need to rape.
	If it has value, you don't need to point guns at people's heads to get them to fund your work because you have to prove the value and provide the value.
	It's a bad business plan if you steal the money to pay for it because if it were a good business plan you'd have investors voluntarily lining up to lend you money.
	A business plan is worthless if it's funded at the point of a gun or through fraud.
	And climate change is worthless because it's funded at the point of a gun.
	I don't have to look over every business plan that was funded through fraud to say, is it a good business plan or not?
	By definition, it's not, because otherwise it would be voluntarily funded.
	And people don't really understand this.
	The problem with obsessing over this word or that word or this email or that email is it's like trying to map the world going two miles an hour with your eyes two inches off the ground.
	It's like, oh, I think we're coming to an ocean.
	Wait. Wait.
	No, it's a puddle. Let's keep moving, right?
	You're looking too close.
	Zoom out, people.
	Zoom out. Look at the sources of the funding.
	Stuff which is funded through violence is specifically the opposite of that which is valuable.
	It's like calling, being a cat burglar, having a job.
	It's not. So, I just sort of wanted to mention that I just look at climate change as just complete enormous I don't need to look any further.
	I mean, I have and you can look at stuff if you want on my website that details how much nonsense it is.
	But this goes way back. The hockey stick graph that was one of the first clinchers for climate change was presented, I think, at the UN or a variety of journals.
	The code behind it was complete nonsense and any data you put in resulted in a hockey stick graph.
	It was like the dot-com falsehoods of the 2000s, except those weren't funded at the point of a gun.
	So this goes back many, many years that the climate change data models have been proven entirely nonsense, but it doesn't change.
	It doesn't matter because it's funded at the point of a gun.
	It doesn't matter what bullshit is revealed, what nonsense is revealed, what lies are revealed.
	It doesn't matter. They'll just come up with new lies.
	They'll shift the funding elsewhere.
	A few people may receive reprimands or even get fired, but it doesn't alter anything.
	It doesn't alter anything.
	It's like finding a rat in the kitchen of a restaurant you were compelled to go to.
	You may get upset, but it doesn't change anything.
	They're still going to get funding. You're still going to be forced to pay for the meals.
	You're still going to be forced to subsidize it.
	It doesn't matter.
	When the gun is in the room, the details don't matter at all.
	And we love obsessing about the details because that way we get to avoid pointing out the gun in the room.
	It's based on coercion. It's based on force.
	Forget looking at the details.
	Forget looking at the words and the commas and the intonation and the context.
	Forget it. It's a wild goose chase that leads you off into a land of make-believe wonder and imaginary nonsense.
	It's a gun in a room.
	It's the gun in the room.
	That matters. The fact that it's funded through forces, all that matters.
	So that's one aspect. Now another aspect is that, again, in the good old land of Angleterre, there is a bill that's coming into effect or a law that's coming into effect next April.
	which says that if you repeatedly ignore warnings about illegal downloading of music you will have your internet cut off by the fist of the state punched out by the fist of the state cut off by the guillotine of the state and there we go and this is sort of belied by a recent study That surveyed a large number of people and found that those who admit to illegally downloading music spend £77 a year on music,
	while those who don't spend £33 a year less.
	In other words, people who download music illegally spend more money on music than those who don't.
	I think that's quite interesting.
	Also, it is the case that this doesn't even take into account The fact that many people who download music will end up going to see concerts, and they pay the money that way.
	And I think more money goes to the artists through concerts than through record sales.
	You're doing more to support the artists if you go see a concert than if you buy a CD or whatever.
	So I think that's interesting.
	One of the great tragedies of statism is that it relies on the gun and the gun makes people functionally retarded.
	Oh, we've got this problem and people want to download the music.
	How are we going to make it work? If you didn't have the gun in the room, you'd have to actually come up with an intelligent and creative solution to this problem.
	And people would be really, really creative and inspired.
	People would come up with solutions that you can't even imagine.
	If the gun wasn't in the room.
	There would be no e-harmony sites if marriages were arranged and enforced upon the population.
	There would be so many creative solutions as to how to meet people online and offline, to how to meet romantic partners.
	Those things wouldn't exist if marriages were forced upon people.
	And so, if we were in a situation where marriages were forced upon people, institutionalized, legalized, permanent rape, Then people would say, well, there are no institutions to solve this problem, so we have to have arranged marriages, because otherwise people will never get married.
	But because we live in a system, at least here in the West, where marriages are usually not arranged, now we have all of these creative and wonderful ways on how to meet people.
	And so... It's the same thing with file sharing.
	If people did not have the access to the state to enforce these rules, they would actually have to come up with really intelligent, creative, and wonderful solutions.
	And they would, because that's what always happens when the gun comes out of the room, is a thousand flowers bloom, to use a chilling phrase from Chairman Mao.
	A thousand flowers bloom when you take the gun out of the room.
	No human being alive can conceive of the amount of creativity that is unleashed by the cessation.
	of using violence to solve complex problems like how to get artists paid in a system of digital media.
	It is a great challenge. I have had some thoughts about it and you can look on my website if you want to look for intellectual property rights.
	I'm going to do a YouTube series at some point but I've got a podcast series on which may be of interest to you.
	But it is a real shame. And of course, it will go the opposite way.
	I mean, people don't understand that when you pass a law, you simply provoke a response.
	You don't get people to comply.
	You simply provoke a response.
	When you pass a law that says, It is illegal to download files, and you will get X, Y, and Z punishments.
	All you will do is create a market for those who can mask IPs, use proxy servers, and find ways of getting you this information.
	It becomes a game of cat and mouse.
	It's this weird idea that people have.
	You sit down, and people are just going to sit down and go, okay, well, but that's not the way that human beings operate.
	When you pass a law, you simply provoke a response.
	It becomes a game of cat and mouse, and Anyway, people will understand this at some point, but while we have the state, people go and do this stupid stuff.
	Now, the last thing I wanted to mention is that this unemployment of the United States is staggeringly brutal.
	It's almost 20% for teenagers, 30% for African Americans, 17.5% Of underemployment and unemployment, the official rate is over 10%.
	This is after the stimulus package was promised, promised, I tell you, to never let the unemployment rate go over 8.5%.
	Of course, you can make these promises, spend hundreds of billions of dollars, and the fact that you're completely Ass wrong has no consequences whatsoever because you're on that side of the gun.
	You're on that side of the gun, which means you can spout any kind of propaganda you want, make any kind of promises, any kind of lies, and it doesn't matter what happens.
	All you're doing is pacifying and appeasing people in the moment with your lies.
	It doesn't matter down the road that you're completely wrong, you've blown their savings at the next generation, and more and more people are out of work, which was completely predictable.
	It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that your promises aren't kept because You're at the point of a gun.
	If you have your wife locked in your basement, it doesn't matter if you're a good husband.
	You can make all the promises you want in the world to shut her up for five minutes, but it doesn't matter.
	Sorry about all the grim metaphors, but...
	I mean, we're talking about the gun in the room, right?
	So, I think it's really...
	And, of course, the solutions.
	Oh, dear Lord in heaven, they're so boring.
	Again, I used to get mad about them.
	Now, they're just...
	I've reached that Zen phase, that Zen place.
	We're listening to people's solutions about the problems of unemployment are staggeringly boring.
	It's like, oh my god, sorry, it's quite a record stuff.
	It's just broken, broken record stuff.
	It's repeated, ad nauseum, unthinking, brain-squandered crap that people spew out.
	I think it was Dowd who came up with some solutions like, Hey, let's give a tax holiday for a year so that people will be encouraged to hire.
	Hey, let's have the federal government subsidize wages for people.
	Hey, let's have another stimulus package.
	Hey, let's use the gun in the room to force people to pay for others.
	Oh my god. A tax holiday is not a tax holiday, because if the government loses money on particular taxes, it doesn't cut its overall spending.
	It just taxes other people more, or it goes into deficit financing, or it prints more money, all of which steal, usually from the most vulnerable members of the population.
	There's no such thing as a tax reduction.
	There is no such thing as a tax reduction.
	It's a complete myth. The only thing that matters is a spending reduction.
	A tax break is not a tax break.
	Hey, I'm paying less on my income tax.
	Well, you're just going to end up paying more for stamps.
	It doesn't matter.
	It's the spending that counts, not the tax cuts.
	If we didn't learn this through the Reagan quote revolution, then we're never going to learn it, right?
	Reagan cuts certain taxes, but the growth of the federal government went up by two-thirds under his eight-year reign.
	So, tax cuts are complete nonsense.
	All tax cuts are are hidden tax increases somewhere else or They are deficit financing or they are robbing from the poor largely through inflation, through the overprinting of money.
	It doesn't matter if the government cuts your taxes.
	It only matters if the government cuts its spending.
	Which it never does. Just don't believe the smoke and mirrors of tax cuts.
	It doesn't mean anything at all.
	It's just pushing a balloon in from one side, just pushes the other side out even more.
	So all of these solutions to the problems of unemployment, there are so few people who can look at this and say, well, why are people unemployed when they desperately want work?
	Why is it that, you know, one in six Americans say that someone they know has lost a job, households?
	Why is it that people are unemployed?
	Well, people are unemployed because they'll be shot if they get a job.
	It's not complicated.
	It's never complicated. This is something that George Orwell wrote many years ago in Down and Out in Paris and London.
	He said, sociologists will often say, why do these tramps keep moving?
	Why do these bums that he was hanging out with for a year or two, why are they always moving?
	And they say, oh, well, they're vagabonds.
	They've got a sort of gypsy ethic.
	They've got all of these sociological explanations.
	And he said, but it's all nonsense.
	The reason that the bums keep moving is because they'll be thrown in jail if they stay in the same city for more than a day or two.
	They keep moving because they're forced to.
	It's like asking, why do cattle go a certain way when someone's jazzing their ass with a cattle prop?
	Well, because someone's jazzing their ass with a cattle prop.
	That's why they go that way.
	It's not complicated. Why are people unemployed?
	Because they will be shocked for getting a job.
	It is that simple. If you get a job under the minimum wage, if you're willing to underbid somebody else just to get a job, just to get a toehold in the market, if you're one of the one in five teenagers who can't get a job, if you work for under the minimum wage, Your employer or you will be shot, right? You will be sent notices.
	You will be sent fines. If you don't pay them, you get a court date and eventually someone's going to put a gun to your head if you don't comply and drag your ass off to prison.
	Why do people not have jobs?
	What if somebody wants to say, well, I'm not going to pay This particular pension tax, or I'm not going to pay this particular social security tax so that I can actually afford to hire someone.
	Well, you don't pay that tax, you will get shot.
	If you come to a voluntary arrangement with somebody to get a job that is outside or against the arbitrary violent fiats of your local state or remote state, you will be shot for a lack of compliance.
	It's not complicated. Why is the unemployment rate 10.5%?
	Or 17% or higher, depending on how you count it.
	Why is it that one in five people can't get a job or a decent job or is underemployed or part-time workers?
	Why is it that 10% of people can't find work?
	Because 10% of people will be shot if they get a job under their own terms, under what they will be willing to negotiate under a free market environment.
	It's not complicated. The unemployment rate is a frickin' bullet hole.
	It's a bullet hole in the forehead of society.
	It is all the people Who will be shot if they work under their own terms?
	It's not complicated to figure out why people are unemployed because they'll be shot for getting a job.
	And so the idea that we say, well, why don't we just stop shooting people for getting work?
	Why don't we just stop hurting people around and telling them what they can and can't do at the point of gun and let them negotiate their own fricking lives?
	What an unusual concept.
	It's not complicated.
	Anytime you look at any enormous deviation within society, You will automatically see the gun.
	You will automatically see the gun.
	Why are CEO salaries so much higher relative to workers' wages than they used to be?
	Well, because people get shot for competing on it.
	Because all these regulations and all this government coercion and so on, and the fact that there's so much money herded into the stock market, which distorts CEO incentives, because if people don't fund CEO salaries, they will get shot.
	If you don't put your money in your 401k, it gets taxed at a higher rate.
	If you don't pay that higher rate, you get shot.
	So if you don't give your money over to these jackals, you get shot.
	That's why they're paid so much.
	It's not complicated.
	You look at any major social divergence, any blip, any skew of the normalized bell curve, and you will find a gun.
	It's that simple. It's not complicated.
	So when people say, well, we've got a problem, we've got a bullet hole.
	In the forehead of society, call 10.5% or 20% or 30% unemployment.
	How are we going to solve it? Load up, friends, and let's start shooting again.
	Because that's all people can think about these days.
	Oh my god, it's so boring.

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